LAWYERS, GUNS AND MONEY

Art Gallery of South Australia, North Terrace, South Australia 5000

Ph. 08 8207 7000 Fax. 08 8207 7070

For the duration of Lawyers, Guns and Money, the Art Gallery of South Australia is highlighting related works from its permanent collection. A selection of these are discussed here. Others include works by S.T. Gill, Ivor Hele, Lidia Groblicka, Robert Boynes, Richard Dunn, Ian North and Juan Davila. In addition, there will be a series of lunchtime talks about works included in the project.

Ann NEWMARCH born Adelaide 1945 For John Lennon and my two sons 1981 Adelaide colour screenprint on two sheets of paper 91.0 x 65.0 cm each (image) Purchased with the assistance of The Savings Bank of South Australia through The Art Gallery of South Australia Foundation 1982

For Adelaide-based artist Ann Newmarch, the fatal shooting of musician John Lennon in December 1980 was the catalyst for a diptych dealing with the prevalence of guns and violence in contemporary society. Her screenprint For John Lennon and my two sons also brought to the fore Newmarch's concerns about anti-social behaviour learned by young boys through playing with toy guns. Collaged together are snippets from media reports, advertisements and other images. Most unsettling is the image of her young son holding the gun-shaped 'Baby-Care Wild West Toothbrush' to his mouth, a toothbrush which Newmarch had repeatedly protested about to store managers.

The text along the base of this print sums up Newmarch's feelings on this issue: 'homicide, genocide become household words... news becomes entertainment and toys teach a disrespect for humankind'.

Julie Robinson, Associate Curator of Prints, Drawings & Photographs will give a lunchtime talk on this work at 12.45 pm on Tuesday 29 July 1997 in Gallery 9.

WEEGEE United States 1899-1968 O Sole Mio c1940 New York gelatin-silver photograph 34.0 x 27.2 cm (image) South Australian Government Grant 1993

Born in Austria in 1899, Arthur Felig - alias Weegee - moved to New York at the age of ten and quickly embraced the darker side of his adopted city. He became obsessed with crime, working at odd jobs during the day so that he could spend his nights photographing murderers, accident victims, gangsters, transvestites, seedy socialites and other creatures of the night. He visited the Manhattan Police Headquarters nightly, describing it as follows: 'Here was the nerve centre of the city I knew and here I would find the pictures I wanted. I would arrive at midnight The police teletype machine would be singing a song of crime and violence: Body floating in East River, Dead on arrivalNew-born baby found alive in ashcanMan at emergency ward at Bellevue Hospital with his pecker stuck in bottle (Hi, Doctor Kinsey!). This was to be my world for the next ten years, my private island, my little niche. Crime was my oyster, and I liked it'.

The only civilian permitted to have a police radio in his car, Weegee was renowned for being one of the first to arrive at the scene of a crime. In O Sole Mio, a blood-stained victim is inspected by anxious bystanders and policemen, as a group of journalists (or detectives) are being briefed nearby.

Sarah Thomas, Assistant Curator of Prints, Drawings & Photographs, will give a lunchtime talk about this work at 12.45 pm on Tuesday 24 June in Gallery 6.

Noel COUNIHAN born Melbourne 1913 died Melbourne 1986 Albert Namatjira 1959 Melbourne linocut on paper 51.2 x 23.3 cm (image) David Murray Bequest Fund 1959

Counihan made this allegorical work in response to the death of Aboriginal artist Albert Namatjira. Namatjira had been imprisoned the year before for supplying fellow members of the Arunta tribe with alcohol. Counihan felt very strongly that Namatjira (indeed all Aboriginal people) had been wronged, writing in Overland magazine in October 1958, 'Albert Namatjira has long been the victim of both exploitation and of humbug and, as recent events have shown, his conditions of life are nothing short of tragic(He) must be fought for, his citizenship and freedom safeguarded'. Counihan asserted that the first necessary step in granting equality to Aboriginal people would be the immediate and indiscriminate granting of citizenship.

Counihan believed strongly in the social purpose of art and many of his prints focus on humanist concerns, taking as their subject the victims of social and political injustice. Albert Namatjira is a moving testimony to an artist caught between two cultures, whose work has recently been re-interpreted and accorded a unique and distinguished place in the history of Australian art.

Robyn STACEY born Brisbane 1952 Jet from the series Redline 7,000 1988 Sydney direct colour positive photograph 180.0 x 100.0 cm (image) Maude Vizard-Wholohan Art Prize Purchase Award 1990

This work comes from a series of photographs that explore the visual style of 'film noir'. In these images the urban environment is presented as an amalgam of the symbols of noir and gangster movies. Suggesting a montage film-still or a movie poster, Jet captures a moment of suspense.

The image was created by the layering and re-photographing of transparencies. The high-gloss finish conveys the seamlessness and illusion of classic Hollywood films.

William STRUTT born Great Britain 1825 arrived Australia 1850 died Great Britain 1915 Equestrian portrait of Sergeant George Sutherland and Trooper Robert William Davidson of the Victoria Police Force 1861 Melbourne oil on canvas 38.5 x 36.0 cm Gift of the Art Gallery of South Australia Foundation 1995

William STRUTT born Great Britain 1825 arrived Australia 1850 died Great Britain 1915 Equestrian portrait of Sergeant John Darby and another member of the Victoria Police Force 1861 Melbourne oil on canvas 38.5 x 36.0 cm Mrs Mary Overton Gift Fund 1995

These two equestrian portraits flank another work by William Strutt, Officer and men of the Victoria Police in the displays of Victorian colonial art at the Art Gallery of South Australia. The three paintings are probably part of a large body of commissioned work which Strutt did for the Chief Commissioner of Police in Victoria. They were originally conceived by the artist as a triptych, an inscription in Strutt's hand on a photograph of the three reading 'The Police Force of the Colony of Victoria. Australia. Mounted & Foot. 1861. Bush and escort service; Officers and privates; Full dress'. The paintings did not come into the Gallery's collection as a group, however, and this pair of equestrian portraits was acquired three years after Officers and men. William Strutt, who resided in Australia for twelve years, was a major figure, portrait and animal painter of the mid nineteenth century. These paintings document with photographic realism the uniforms of the Victoria Police and are typically accurate portraits of his sitters.

Douglas ROBERTS born Kadina, South Australia 1919 died Adelaide 1976 The Tribunal 1949 Adelaide oil on canvas 61.3 x 61.8 cm Elder Bequest Fund 1984

In the autumn of 1944 the avant-garde literary journal Angry Penguins, co-edited by Adelaide's Max Harris and Melbourne's John Reed, carried the now-celebrated poems of the fictitious writer Ern Malley. Malley's poetry was perceived as indecent and publisher Harris was subjected in Adelaide to an arduous court battle which he subsequently lost. Harris's friend, the South Australian artist Douglas Roberts, a regular contributor of visual material to Angry Penguins, produced a series of satirical drawings caricaturing the prudish minds of those who found the Malley poetry indecent. Roberts's painting The Tribunal can be seen as the artist's summing-up at the end of the decade of Adelaide's 1940s clash between the traditional and the modern. It can also be seen as an illustration of Adelaide's judgement of Max Harris, who, bound, naked and vulnerable, is stripped of all dignity while he is prodded and considered by the suited men who surround him.

Jane Hylton, Curator of Australian Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia will give a fifteen-minute talk on Douglas Roberts's drawings relating to the trial of Max Harris on 8 July in Gallery 6.

N. VICURI Italy, 19th century The finding of Moses 1889 Rome? marble, 150 x 52 cm base diameter Gift of Sir E. T. Smith 1890

According to Judaeo-Christian belief, Moses received the stone tablets containing the law of the Ten Commandments at the top of Mt Sinai. As he brought them down the mountain, the original Hebrew text of Exodus (34: 29­30), says that Moses's face 'shone' or, literally, 'sent forth beams'. In the fourth-century A.D. 'Vulgate' Latin Bible, the expression 'sent forth beams' was mistranslated as 'sent forth horns'. This mistake eventually found literal expression in Medieval and Renaissance art, of which the most famous example is Michelangelo's powerful, bearded Moses, carved for the tomb of Pope Julius II in the Church of S. Pietro in Vincoli, Rome.

When at last the error was widely understood, the tradition of a 'horned' Moses was so strong that the rays of light continued to be represented as they are in this nineteenth-century Italian marble statue, as horn-like appendages sprouting from the infant prophet's forehead.

Pieter BRUEGHEL the younger

The Netherlands, 1574­1637/38

The tax-collector's office

c. 1615 Antwerp

oil on wood panel

Bequest of Helen Austin Horn 1934

At the end of the sixteenth century, a costly war of independence was fought in the Netherlands between the Protestant Dutch in the north and Spanish armies occupying Flanders (modern Belgium) in the south. Netherlandish towns were long accustomed to paying heavy local taxes for the purpose of building channels and dykes to drain the land and keep out the sea. However, the crippling burden of additional war taxes, and levies raised to pay for the repair of damaged sea-walls, made the tax-collector the most hated of petty officials on both sides of the conflict.

This is one of approximately forty copies by the artist of a lost painting by his father, Pieter Brueghel the elder. It shows a group of poor Flemish villagers waiting to submit their taxes not in cash but in baskets of eggs, poultry and other produce. A prosperously-dressed tax-collector, assisted by a staff of half-witted clerks, is shown seated behind a counter laden with documents and money-bags. The artist mocks the wastefulness of this hive of bumbling officials by showing piles of cancelled bills and receipts scattered carelessly across the office floor.